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one of the Friday Five, which turned out to be enough

1) What is the first song you remember from your childhood?

Not sure if it's the first, but I like "There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly". I remember being tickled by (what I'd now call) the structure of it. I still like seeing kids being tickled by that sort of thing, with the lighting up at the understanding of what's going on.</div>

Unfortunately some adult heard me singing this song at some point and told me (or my parents?) that I couldn't sing. As in that I was singing off-key. So I stopped singing. Like, for years. Until college. Now I think about that person and think what a shit she was, and how kids should be let to sing however they're singing, and of course they're mostly not "good" at it, the little beginners.

There's even a thing sort of about that in my favorite TV show (which is back tonight for a new season) (!). In one episode Rebecca Bunch's kid self is trying to get a boy to play along with her romantic princess fantasy, and she tells him how it's like in the movie Slumbered, and she starts singing the big song from that (fictitious) film, "One Indescribable Instant", but she's singing it all way off-key. There's even a bit later when the grown-up Rebecca recalls the song again and sings a bit of it crazy off-key herself, like her pre-pubescent other-actress self did in that scene. It's sort of a cringingly fond recognition of what kids are like, and what learning is like, and how the "ignorant" enthusiasm of youth can be celebrated and smiled at, vs. shut down like some assholic woman c.1967 might think should happen.

Here's "One Indescribable Instant" as rendered at Jayma's wedding by Tia Myrna, who is so proud of how she got 3½ stars on "Star Search" in 1984 singing it. :D Animated Disney pastiche. The ending is particularly excellent-funny, to me. Yet there is that sincerity running through it, like through the whole show, however silly, however much a parody. I love how the show makes fun of things and yet has such a palpable fondness for them (us) (people) at the very same time. It's just the right touch, like a gentle friend.

I'm so ready for a weekend. It really should've started last night. That woulda been about right.